My Italian Vacation

When we had last left off I was in hour 10 of my stranding in Rome, Italy.

After 7 hours waiting on the plane and then another 5 hours waiting in the airport we got word that they would be taking us to a hotel. We were led outside to a bus and taken to the lovely "Satellite Palace Hotel", not to be confused with the Palace Hotel where the Economy class passengers were taken. We Business class passengers were taken to a different hotel where we were able to check-in without any trouble and take a shower after 33 hours of travel. I had taken the precaution of packing a change of underwear, a fresh shirt and my pajamas in my carry-on bag, but I had to take a short walk in the heavy Rome rain to a supermarket to buy deodorant, a hair brush and a disposable razor. (Note to self: Add these items to my packing list for future travel.)

After having a light meal at the hotel's restaurant I went back up to my room and lay down for an hour or so. I went down to the lobby to see if there was any word yet from the airlines and was told that the mechanics had the new part and the plan was to fly out at around 10:30 that night. At this point it was about 6pm and we'd been at the hotel for about 2 hours. I asked the front desk where we were in Rome and he told me we were about a half hour's subway ride from the city center, but with the rain and the uncertainty about our plans I didn't want to risk a trip that far away. Instead, at his suggestion I walked about a half mile to the ocean shore. The rain had passed and although it was brisk in my light sweater it was a refreshing walk. I got back to the hotel at 7pm to find that a bus would be picking us up at 8:30pm to take us back to the airport to fly out at 10:30pm.

We got to the airport before 9pm but we had no idea where to go. Ours was not a scheduled flight, so it did not show on the departures board and no one at the airport knew anything about it. There was no one from Ethiopian Air to direct us, so we wandered around the ticketing area for around 30 minutes before we were finally given a gate for our flight.

At 10:45pm the crew arrived at the airport and went out to the aircraft. 45 minutes later, without any announcements they started a cattle-call boarding process. We had been given a plastic transfer pass when we got off the plane earlier that morning. Now each person had to surrender their pass and show their passport so that they could check the names, one-by-one against a printout of the passenger manifest. What a disaster.

On reaching the plane we took out seats and readied to finally continue our journey, but the pilot announced that after restarting the engines cold he would need to run them for 15 minutes before we could depart. That time having expired he finally called for the tractor to push us back from our parking place on the runway. We finally started our takeoff roll at 1:00am, almost 24 hours after we had landed.

We reached Addis Ababa some 5 1/2 hours later, most all of which I slept through courtesy of chemical science. Of course our flight to Entebbe was delayed an hour and a half, but finally, at 2:30pm local time we landed in Uganda. An uneventful 1 hour ride to our hotel finally ended my trip from hell at 4:30pm on Wednesday, some 58 hours after I had left my house in Ventura on Sunday evening. Monday and Tuesday disappeared into the neverness of the travelsphere as if they had never existed for me.

Bon Giorno, Roma

Nope. Not in Uganda yet.

The flight from Los Angeles to Washington, DC was VERY bumpy for the last half hour before landing as we flew through the same storm that landed a tornado up the street from us 4 days ago. Scariest flight I can remember!

After being delayed about 45 minutes, our Ethiopian airlines flight took off from Dulles. I had taken an Ambien sleeping pill as soon as I got on board and I was asleep before the plane even left the gate. Good thing, too. After take-off the plane had to fly yet again through that same storm and the turbulence was more than twice as bad as the flight into Dulles. Not that I knew about it, though, as I was sleeping soundly in a drug-induced coma. Apparently passengers were screaming and phoning loved ones to say final good-byes, but I slept through it all. Scariest flight I won't remember.

On landing in Rome, Italy for a 1 hour refueling stop the pilot announced that there was a bad pump on one of the engines and it would only take a short time to repair. 4 hours later they served us breakfast while the mechanics continued to work on the problem. Finally, after 7 hours on the tarmac they brought buses and told us to take all our carry-on bags and deplane. After 2 hours in the terminal waiting to hear what would happen they gave us meal vouchers for pizza. Now it's 12 noon here in Rome, 10 1/2 hours after landing and still no word. Our crew in Uganda says there's no faster way for us to get there, even if we have to stay over night here in Rome and take tomorrow's flights. Sigh.

It would be a relief if they would just tell us that were re-scheduled for tomorrow, as then we could go into Rome and see the city. I'll post more when I can.

Our Vacation in Germany

1st day of work . . . .

No fun pictures to accompany this post. Today has been all about work.

My travels went as planned and I managed to get 5 or 6 hours of sleep on the flight from Amsterdam to Nairobi and I felt reasonably refreshed when I landed at 7 AM. Cleared customs and found my luggage without any troubles and our driver (and my friend) Jasan was there to meet me and take me to my hotel.

I was told that I had about 2 hours until Jasan would come back to the hotel to take the 7 of us from the US to work. I had a light breakfast with a few of my colleagues and then went up to my room to unpack and take a shower. It felt good to get out those clothes I had been wearing for the last 40 hours.

Not much to tell you about work, except that there was plenty to go around. Here it is now, 6:30 PM and we're all still here, going strong. As usual, we're behind on getting the questions from our editorial staff, but as usual, we'll handle it with no problems.

Safe and sound here on the ground in Nairobi, I'll post more when I have more to say.

Layover in Amsterdam

Well, I've started my travels for Zain Africa Challenge 2010, Season 4. I left on Thursday at 4:15pm from Los Angeles International airport on a great big KLM 747 bound for Amsterdam. I got to sit upstairs in their business class only seating, but it was no big deal. Neither was their service. A short 9 1/2 hours later and we were landing in Amsterdam.

I had nearly 10 hours to kill before my flight to Nairobi, so I locked my carry-on bags into an airport locker and went through customs to spend a few hours touristing. It was easy to catch a train from the station at the airport that took my exactly into the city center of Amsterdam in about 15 minutes. That's a picture of the train station, above.

The first thing I noticed was, it's cold! About 48 degrees. I was glad to have packed my ski shell and a wool scarf in my carry-on because I was very comfortable dressed that way. The next thing I noticed was the traffic. There are more bicycles in Amsterdam than autos. You see them parked everywhere, cluttering the streets and they even have multi-level bike parking lots.

I dodged the bikes as I crossed the streets leaving the train station and saw a number of boating companies in the large canal there offering canal tours in long narrow glass covered boats. I bought a ticket on a tour that was just leaving and saw the sights of Amsterdam from the water for the next hour. Marion will be happy to know that there were no messy seagulls dive-bombing us, no rotten kids dumping buckets of water from bridges on passing boats, and that the glass roof would have protected us if they did.

After my boat ride I decided to walk around the city for a while. I had no plan of what to see or what to do. I knew what I wasn't looking to do. I had no interest in visiting one of Amsterdam's famous coffee houses, of which I saw (and smelled) several. That would be a stupid reason to miss my connecting flight.

I was more interested in the wonderful bakeries and cheese shops I saw. These Dutch love thier cheese; Gouda, Edam, Jarlsberg, big yellow wheels of cheese everywhere you look. I passed on sampling the cheese though and set my sights on a treat that I remember from previous trips to Germany; Dutch Patats. What the Germans call Pommes Frittes and we call French Fries, the Dutch call them Patats and they cut these Belgian potatoes into small wedge-shaped fries and fry them in I don't know what. Then they serve them hot in a paper cone and covered with a mess of your choice of sauces. I chose curry sauce, something between a red curry and a bar-b-que sauce. You eat it with a little wooden fork the size of a toothpick. Yum!

After that I headed back to the airport on the train and still had 4 hours to kill. I got some work done and posted this blog, but now it's just about time to board my flight to Nairobi on Kenya Air.

Halloween 2009

We had a very fun Halloween season this year. It all started with a trip to the Pumpkin patch at Faulkner Farms. They had a pumpkin-lobbing trebuchet that would launch a gourd 100 feet away to it's gut-splashing death.

On Halloween day we started off with Nik's AYSO soccer game, and then it was time to rush home to prepare for the evening.

This is the first year that both Brodie and Nik could really take part in preparing their own pumpkins for carving. Neither of them were too happy with putting their hands in the squishy guts.

They both created their own design for their Jack O' Lanterns and I helped them carve.

Meanwhile, Marion was getting the house ready for a Halloween party we were hosting for Brodie and Nik's friends. We were having about 9 kids and their parents over for games like Skeleton scavenger hunt (find the bones hidden in our yard,) Which Witch? (where each kid demonstrated their psychic skills by reading the minds of the others,) and mummy wrap contest.

She also prepared some spooky treats. The punch bowl had two scary hands floating in it, and the apple slices were dressed up as vampire's mouths with slivered almond fangs. She also served freshly sliced flesh for the grownups (prosciutto on toasted baguette with cream cheese.)

Brodie wanted to be the Terminator for Halloween, so I bought a small makeup kit to cyborg him up. It seemed a shame to let the rest of the makeup go to waste, so we dressed-up Nik's pizza guy costume to make him a Zombie Pizza Guy; "Want a slice?!" I don't usually dress up for Halloween, but since I was hosting the party I thought I should make some effort so I did myself up as The Joker from Batman.

Everyone from the party trick-or-treated as a group in the neighborhood of new homes behind our house. The houses were built very close together with the front doors very close to the side walk, so we were able to visit a lot of homes in a short time. Unfortunately we didn't stop after a short time. The boys returned home at 9 o'clock after more than 2 hours of trick-or-treating, and only stopped because their arms hurt from carrying their heavy bags of loot.

A visit to FoxSports NFL coverage

I got a unique opportunity yesterday to watch a NFL game from great seats. The father of one of the boys on the AYSO soccer team that I coach, Jason Carter, works with Fox Sports and helps broadcast their NFL games. He works for the company that puts the yellow first-down line on the screen, amongst other graphics. That's him on the right, clicking on the his screen to place the blue line that marks the postion of the ball. On the left is Jeff whose job is to constantly monitor the dozen shades of green and brown on the field and set the filter to block them out when their graphics are displayed without drawing the graphics over the chalk lines on the field, the players, the ball and everything else.





Sitting next to them was Ty who works the FoxBox. This display updates the info seen at the top of the screen with the score, the game clock, the down and distance and the live scores of other games around the country. When a penalty flag is thrown he clicks on his "Flag" button and the display on the screen automatically updates.

My credential gave me access to all parts of the stadium and to all parts of the production areas. During the second half I watched part of the game from the main truck where director Sandy Grossman and producer Michael Burks were calling the game. Both of these guys have won Emmys for their sports television coverage and they've both worked on Super Bowl broadcasts as well as many other sporting events.

Jason encouraged me to wander around during the game and take advantage of my pass, so I went to the press level and visited the broadcast booth where announcers Sam Rosen and Tim Ryan called the game. I also stopped by the press booth while I was up there.

My visit wasn't just for fun. I was hoping to see how they linked their statistics-tracking computers with their graphics-building computers to generate graphics such as the one pictured above. This is similar to what I am tring to do with my work on the Zain Africa Challenge TV show in Africa and I was hoping to pick up some clues on how I might accomplish this.

Unfortunately, their approach was decidedly low-tech. There was a group of 4 or 5 guys in the back row of the truck tracking game statistics with tally-marks on note pads and then yelling out the numbers when needed to the guy at the graphics computer who would type the numbers in by hand.

Never the less, it was a great experience to get to watch them produce a Network NFL game and I'm glad for the chance to have done it.